In Sochi, U.S. goes to extreme

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ADLER, Russia Team USA's success at the Sochi Games reflects an increasing emphasis by the U.S. Olympic Committee and the IOC on extreme sports, a move some of its supporters and critics call the “Californication” of the Winter Games.

The U.S. won 28 medals, second only to host Russia's 33 and the highest total for a U.S. team at a Winter Olympics held outside of North America. Team USA's nine gold medals were one short of the most by the U.S. at a Winter Games.

“Things are alive and well in the sports world in the U.S.,” USOC executive director Scott Blackmun said.

A breakdown, however, also reveals several areas of concern.

An examination shows how much the U.S depends on new extreme sports, many of them developed at California and Western states' ski resorts and snowboard parks, to keep it high in the standings.

In high-profile, traditional Winter Olympic sports such as figure skating and speedskating, the U.S. hit historic lows. The Sochi Games also showed that in even some of the new Made-in-the-USA extreme sports the U.S. edge can be as short as one Olympic cycle.

There was cause for concern for the USOC away from mountain venues and ice rinks as well. New IOC president Thomas Bach seemed to go out of his way to take verbal shots at President Barack Obama and the U.S government, at one point complaining about an apparent violation of IOC protocol by President George W. Bush during the 2002 opening ceremony.

With Bach setting the tone, the anti-American buzz within the IOC led many longtime Olympic insiders and observers to question the viability of a U.S. bid for the 2024 Summer Games or 2026 Winter Olympics, or whether an American bid is even worth pursuing.

For its part, the USOC went out of its way to praise the IOC, the Sochi organizing committee and Russian President Vladimir Putin during the Games, a fawning that frequently seemed over the top.

“He has really owned the Games,” USOC president Larry Probst said in a description many of Putin's critics would agree with for much different reasons.

In the past decade, the IOC has added a number of extreme skiing and snowboarding sports in an effort to attract a younger audience.

“It's made the Winter Games incredibly popular from a broadcast standpoint,” said Blackmun, who added he would like to see skateboarding added to the Summer Games.

The “Californication” of the Winter Olympics has also been incredibly good for Team USA.

Of the 28 U.S. medals, nine came in 12 events introduced to the Olympic program in Sochi. Of the 30 new medals in Sochi, almost one out of every three went to an American athlete.

“It was really fun to watch the new events that were introduced here in Sochi, and I think they have proven to be a fantastic model for how Team USA did in those events,” said Alan Ashley, USOC chief of sport performance. “It's great to see the new athletes and new disciplines. I love to see the numbers and look at these new options.”

That most of these events were invented in the mountains of California or the Rockies has given U.S. athletes a significant head start on their Olympic competition, reflected in the medal standings.

But the world is catching up to the U.S. in these new events at an increasingly faster clip, which in turn means Team USA needs the IOC to continue adding new extreme sports to maintain its high spot in the medals table.

The U.S. had won at least one medal in men's moguls in every Olympics since the event was added in 1992. The U.S. won none at the 2014 Games.

Team USA also won none in men's snowboard halfpipe, an event the U.S. had dominated since it was added in 1998, winning eight of the 12 medals available before 2014.

In the events on the program four years ago in Vancouver, the U.S. won 19 in Russia, down from the U.S.-record 37 in 2010. The U.S. won 9.5 percent of all medals at Sochi, its lowest percentage since 1998 in Nagano.

“We're not really concerned,” Ashley said. “While we may not be winning as many medals as we want to it's because it's become more and more competitive. It's not that we're doing worse. It's that the competition is growing.”

But it is with the so-called traditional Winter Olympic sports where the U.S. slide is most dramatic.

The U.S. failed to medal in speedskating for the first time in 30 years and the debate over whether a high-tech Under Armour skin suit was to blame was one of the biggest controversies of a Games riddled with them.

“We're fairly confident it was not the suits,” Blackmun said.

While Meryl Davis and Charlie White waltzed off with the ice dancing gold medal, the U.S. did not win a medal in men's, women's or pairs figure skating for the first time since 1936. The U.S. women have not won a medal at an Olympics or World Championships since 2006, the longest such drought since before World War II.

U.S. coaches and current and former Olympic skaters said they hoped the poor showing would force the USOC and U.S. Figure Skating to re-evaluate their commitment and approach to developing the sport.

“It might be a help to U.S. Skating if you put it in the other way, the other direction,” coach Frank Carroll said. “It might make them feel like, ‘What are we doing wrong with our program? Do we need to build some training centers like the Koreans have, and the Japanese and Chinese and the Russians?'

“Look at these facilities. What do we have? What do we have in America? We haven't built a rink for, for (a long time). Maybe … it might even give them a kick in the butt. So it could be a positive as well as a negative.”

In fact, some U.S. Olympians questioned whether the money potentially spent on an American bid for the 2024 or 2026 Games wouldn't be better off going to fund athletes at the grassroots and elite levels.

USOC officials danced around the bid issue in Russia. The USOC has had several discussions with potential 2024 bid cities, including Los Angeles, the Bay Area and Dallas, but is still evaluating whether to pursue a bid.

There has been some suggestion the U.S. would have a greater chance at landing the 2026 Winter Games for the Lake Tahoe area or Colorado than the 2024 Games.

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